“Hieroglyphics is a novel that tugs at the deepest places of the human soul—a beautiful, heart piercing meditation on life and death and the marks we leave on this world. It is the work of a wonderful writer at her finest and most profound.”—Jessica Shattuck, author of The Women in the CastleA mesmerizing novel about the burden of secrets carried across generations.   Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically— lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.  Now, after many years in Boston, they’ve retired to North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps...

"Invigorating . . . Savagely effective . . . Displays the same wit and ironic compassion that gained so many fans for her novels."--The New York Times Book ReviewModern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In eleven stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.Stuck in the slow lane, gunning their motors, they are women living the real life, hoping things will get better, but surprised when they occasionally do.From Publishers WeeklyIn this peppery, potent collection by McCorkle ( Ferris Beach ), 11 memorable women, ranging from high school student to retiree, confide details of troubled relationships. Without fail, their voices, hopes and sorrows hit the mark; it's easy to empathize with them and to uneasily recall moments when our own lives have mirrored theirs. Optimism and sorrow are here in equal measure: the title story's chronic dieter, abandoned by her husband, surprises herself by coping with marital crisis and unwittingly losing weight. The selective, feisty narrator of "Man Watcher" admits that her search for a male partner may be a "snipe hunt," the undeniably odd main character of "Comparison Shopping" learns with dismay that a couple on The New Newlywed Game consider her their "weirdest friend," and the teenage heroine of "Carnival Lights" discovers that the hottest gossip in town is about her boyfriend's mom. In the wrenching "Departures," an inconsolable widow spends time utterly alone in busy airports and malls, and in "Waiting for Hard Times to End," a girl worries when an expected postcard from her freewheeling, fearless older sister fails to arrive. McCorkle imbues her capable women with extraordinary depth and dimension, and she resolves their situations with enchanting grace and wit. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalIn her first short story collection, McCorkle resumes her remarkable storytelling skills, already demonstrated in four well-received novels: The Cheer Leader (Algonquin, 1984), July 7th (Algonquin, 1984), Tending to Virginia ( LJ 9/1/87), and Ferris Beach ( LJ 9/15/90). Widows, recent divorcees, teenage girls, retired women, and single mothers populate these pages. Each woman imparts to McCorkle's fortunate readers a touching, downright bone-tickling account of her individual struggle in the New South. Despite the variety of voices, any of these women might easily conclude, as does Norlina in "Comparison Shopping," "I feel for the first time that there is a place for me in this world and I no longer need a passport to get there." Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/92.-Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., ColumbiaCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

McCorkle takes us back to her longtime fictional home town, Fulton, North Carolina, to meet a broad range of characters that have much in common with the so-called lesser species. The voices with which McCorkle tells their stories crackle with wit, but also with a deeper-and more forgiving-wisdom than ever before.

"Invigorating . . . Savagely effective . . . Displays the same wit and ironic compassion that gained so many fans for her novels."—The New York Times Book ReviewModern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In eleven stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.Stuck in the slow lane, gunning their motors, they are women living the real life, hoping things will get better, but surprised when they occasionally do.

The foibles of the people in Jill McCorkle's world are so familiar that we want nothing so much as to watch them walk into—and then get out of—life's inevitable traps. Here, in her first collection in eight years, McCorkle collects eleven brand-new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight.In honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, or glass slippers, all of the women in these stories march to a place of new awareness, in one way or another, transforming their lives. They make mistakes, but they don't waste time hiding behind them. They move on. They are strong. And they're funny, even when they are sad.These stories are the work of a great storyteller who knows exactly how—and why—to pair pain with laughter.

When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves. In "Life Prerecorded," perhaps McCorkle's finest short piece to date, the pregnant narrator finds the real meaning of new life by visiting with a very old neighbor who's waiting, too, for his own new life. In these and the rest of the nine stories, Jill McCorkle acts on her penchant for taming the outrageous, humanizing the forbidden, and grounding the hilarious.

Jo Spencer is a girl who knows what to be and how to be it-straight-A student, cheerleader, May Queen, popular and cute and virginal, and in perfect control. But halfway through her first year in college in the early seventies, her carefully normal life explodes and she comes completely undone. In The Cheerleader, Jo Spencer looks back, as if she were watching reruns of old syndicated TV shows, to figure out what happened.Ordinary chance has dumped Sam Swett, age twenty-one, in the Marshboro, North Carolina, Quik Pik in the middle of a murder. Sam has shaved his head, given away all his belongings except his typewriter; he's drunker than he's ever been and running as fast as he can from his upper-middle-class upbringing. For the next twenty-four hours, Sam is propelled straight into the very core of this small Southern town as it sorts through the facts.

In the course of this wide-ranging, richly detailed novel, every kind of human problem finds its way to the doorstep of Quee Purdy, a tireless entrepreneur for whom love and sex are the "hot commodities" in which she deals. McCorkle's extraordinary storytelling skills allow her to juggle at least six parallel stories in a novel about playing God. And she does it divinely.

Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction. Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life’s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction.     There’s retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts; Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son; Marge Walker, the town’s self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime; Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her; C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop; and Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths. As each character 
begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all.     Delivered with her trademark wit, Jill 
McCorkle’s constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. With Life After Life, she has conjured up an 
entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic can—and do—appear when we least expect it. Review"McCorkle finds that space where the humor and the sadness in these characters' lives come together, that space where she has always worked the best of her magic...You are undoubtly changed when you reach the novel's end."(Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang )"With Life After Life, Jill McCorkle knocks it out of the park and into the cosmos. Each character holds unique surprises that unveil the intricate magic of this brilliant novel."(Beth Henley, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright )"Jill is going to break your heart, but along the way make you glad you went with her. She has written a book that will haunt me for a long time - in the best way."(Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard out of Carolina ) Review“Like Flannery O’Connor, McCorkle’s genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom—all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South’s greatest writers; she is also one of America’s.”(Ron Rash, author of SERENA )

We always knew Southern women were different, but now we know why: They don't have babies, they have generations!When Virginia Turner Ballard has a baby, it's a grand occasion. Her mother and grandmother come to the lying in to help her prepare for the new arrival. And what help! It is more physic than physical, more familial than either, and it reawakens memories of kith and clan in all of us.For family members are real, and as this story has it, are a legacy passed down among a family's women. They are a gift in the celebration of growing up, a process in which the generations participate, a participation that Jill McCorkle shows us lasts into old age and give us hope that those last years may really be golden.

An unsolved murder at the Quik Pik propels us into twenty-four hours of rich comedy and fast action in the North Carolina town of Marshboro. Two memorable presences are Granner Weeks, a white widow, and Fannie McNair, a black housekeeper. They know that people learn to live by living with each other--in each other's ways and in each other's hearts. "With these JULY 7th and The CHEER LEADER . . . McCorkle emerges as the most exciting young American writer of fiction to come along in years."--Cleveland Plain Dealer.